The Starling Twins had been sixteen when they pulled off the House of Cleeve robbery, at a diamond merchant’s in Bond Street. It was their first act of witchcrime to hit the headlines, for they’d used both glamours and fascinations to waltz off with over ten thousand pounds worth of gems.
Cooper Street’s ambitions were more modest. Their mark was a small jeweller’s in a quiet Islington street. The manager was a young woman, new to the job. She spent most of her days reading celebrity magazines and updating her Facebook account. There was one security guard and two CCTV cameras. The shop and its display cases were alarmed and there was, of course, the usual iron bell over the door.
The account the manager gave to the shop’s owner and the police began simply enough. She and the guard had been alone in the premises on Friday afternoon, when a teenage girl came through the door. Her hair was long and dark, and she was wearing a little black dress and leopard print heels. There was perhaps something a little . . . common about her, the manager thought, but the outfit looked expensive. Her Gucci bag and oversized Chanel sunglasses certainly were. What’s more, she had arrived in a BMW with blacked-out windows.
The girl said she was just browsing. ‘It’s s’posed to be for my birthday.’ Her voice was a touch rough around the edges too. ‘But Blake’s fed up with shopping. We’ve been looking all morning.’
Glancing out of the window, the manager saw a teenage boy lounging by the side of the BMW. She did a double-take.
This was no ordinary teenager. It was Blake Gordon, star of the Heretic Heart film franchise. He played a heroic young inquisitor, fighting witches in sixteenth-century Spain. She’d read in her magazines that he was in London to promote the latest film, and here he unmistakably was. Scruffy, with warm caramel skin and dimples, just like in all the posters and pap-shots. The only difference was that he was a little shorter than she’d realised, and looked younger than eighteen.
In her statement to the police, the manager was careful to explain that her excitement at seeing him was purely professional. This was her chance to make a big sale, and gain some publicity for the shop. Her pulse quickened.
Meanwhile, the girl was trying on a heart-shaped sapphire and gold locket, pouting into the mirror. ‘I’m not sure he’d like it on me,’ she said.
‘Perhaps,’ said the manager, ‘your . . . er . . . friend might like to come in and help you choose?’
The girl shrugged. ‘He says he’s shopped-out. You can try.’
The manager needed no further encouragement. She hurried out into the street, leaving the security guard to watch the girl. Deferentially, she invited Blake Gordon to join them inside.
At first, the celebrity was both grumpy and reluctant. But if he’d been charming from the first it really would have seemed too good to be true. He was accompanied by his minder, a muscular young man with a bald head and dark glasses.
Inside the shop, Blake went up to the girl and squeezed her around the waist. She put her hands on his, squeezed him back, and smiled. ‘What do you think?’
She was trying to decide between two necklaces. One was the gold locket, the other a diamond necklace. ‘Either one, whatever,’ Blake yawned. Catching the manager’s eye, he flashed the smile that millions of girls had stuck to their bedroom walls. Blake Gordon’s powers were so much more alluring than witchwork. He was, after all, a celebrity.
It was then that someone else came into the shop. A middle-aged woman – the frumpy type. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘It’s Alanzo!’ Alanzo was the Spanish inquisitor Blake Gordon played in the films. ‘I knew it. I saw you through the window. Alanzo. It’s really you!’
The security guard shifted his feet uneasily. It was getting pretty crowded in there: the film star, his girlfriend, the minder, the manager – and now the fan. Blake Gordon gave the new arrival a look of weary scorn, before turning his attentions back to the girl.
She had returned the locket to its case, and was just taking off the diamond necklace. There was a slight problem with a catch, which had got tangled in her hair. Blake was helping her. Meanwhile, the fan grew insistent: telling him how much she admired him, asking for an autograph for her niece. The security guard was between her and Blake, but the situation was complicated by Blake’s minder, who was getting aggressive. The manager tried to intervene. There was a moment of confusion, raised voices and a slight scuffle, before the fan was ejected from the shop.
Calm was restored, but the damage was done. Blake wanted to leave. At once. Impatiently, he hustled his girlfriend away, dropping the diamonds into the manager’s hand. ‘You’re a star,’ he murmured in his soft American twang. Yes, she’d admit it, she was dazzled – but not so dazzled that she didn’t get a good look at the necklace. All was as it should be. She carefully returned it to the case and the security guard held open the door.
The disgruntled fan had already left in a huff; now the BMW pulled away and drove down the road. The guard resumed his post, the manager fanned her flushed cheeks. The excitement was over. It wasn’t until at least twenty minutes later that she glanced at the case and saw the diamonds had turned into a cheap trinket of paper, ribbon and plastic.
Cooper Street had only had two and a bit days to arrange the scam, but preparations had been intense, and more disciplined than Lucas would have thought possible. Glory’s wig was real hair but her designer accessories were fake. So were the number plates on the BMW, borrowed from a car salesman who owed the coven a favour. Only Lucas had a glamour. He wore Blake’s over Harry’s, which he still carried, so the original illusion would remain intact after Blake’s was destroyed. The others had used the services of Earl’s sister-in-law, a make-up artist called Val. Her most dramatic work was on Nate, who had a latex cap stuck over his head to turn him bald. Val had played the persistent fan, and Patch had been the driver.
Stealing a real person’s identity was quite different to inventing a character like Harry, and Lucas felt a twinge of guilt on Blake Gordon’s behalf. The Starling Twins, he knew, had impersonated Elizabeth Taylor in their heist.
His first task, however, was to craft the decoy necklace. A fascination was witchwork that changed people’s perception of their environment or objects in it. The most popular use for this was to disguise illegal goods and fake valuable ones. Using an image of the diamonds on the jeweller’s website as his reference, Lucas created a rough copy by threading his fae through a gold ribbon and plastic beads. It wasn’t just the physical appearance he needed to mimic, however. The false jewels had to take on the aura of beauty and luxury that the real ones represented. As symbols of this, he took a glossy picture of a model from a magazine, and a rare fifty-pound note from the coven kitty. Moistening both pieces of paper with spit, he rolled and twisted them into thick threads, which he knotted in turn to the gold ribbon. He wrapped up the end result in a silk cloth.
The transformation occurred after Glory undid the wrapping. Lucas couldn’t do this himself; a fascination was brought to life only when looked at with fresh eyes. To all intents and purposes, the diamonds and gold were genuine. Unlike a glamour, the object had been physically changed, not just people’s perception of it. But it too was a short-term transformation, and needed to be kept close to its creator for the witchwork to hold.
Passing the fascination to Glory was the next challenge. That was the object of the waist-squeezing exercise. Glory orchestrated the final switch: using her long hair to disguise her hand movements, and her light fingers to draw up the false necklace from where she’d dropped it inside her bra. Meanwhile, Lucas helped shield her from view by pretending to fiddle with the catch. The first few times they tried the hand-over, they did it sternly and straight-faced; but as Lucas kept fumbling the pass, Glory got exasperated, then amused. When they graduated to the necklace-down-the-bra stage, they started to laugh – in guilty, embarrassed spurts that even Auntie Angel’s scolding couldn’t bring under control.
Glory was certainly acting more friendly towards Lucas, though he never felt she truly relaxed in his presence. He was reluctantly impressed by her sleight of hand. He remembered the caution for shoplifting recorded in her file. She’d probably been playing pickpockets ever since she was in nappies.
After the laboriousness of their rehearsals, the real thing seemed to be over in seconds. Trying to recall it was like watching a film-clip play at double-speed. Lucas was still getting used to the dark, sweet rush of fae, and still mistrusted it. But the exhilaration afterwards, as they bundled into the getaway car, was less complex. It was pure adrenalin.
Lucas tore up Blake’s glamour, Nate pulled off his bald spot and Glory her wig. They were all gasping and giggling. In the front seat, Nate whooped and punched the air. Patch was singing.
Glory turned to Lucas, hair spilling over her face, and dangled the diamonds in front of him. For the first time he really took in how beautiful they were: moonlight on ice. ‘Tell me that wasn’t fun.’ Her eyes were as bright as the glittering stones, her laughter teasing and triumphant. Lucas grinned back.
He told himself it was only a performance. A crime caper, like in the movies or a trashy detective novel. WICA had been forewarned of the escapade. He’d slipped away from the coven during a break in rehearsals, using an elusion to make his way to a public phone box. There was a special number to dial. Muttering down the line to the secret service operator, he’d felt as much as a phoney as the decoy necklace.
Twenty minutes after their getaway from the shop, Patch pulled into a deserted underground car park. He stayed to change the number plates and wipe the BMW clear of prints. The other three, still talking loudly and overexcitedly, headed for Cooper Street to show Auntie Angel their prize.
The gems were worth just over three thousand pounds, a tidy sum for three days’ graft, but hardly worth the risk involved. That wasn’t the point. The robbery had made the evening news and would be reported in all the papers tomorrow, adding to the frenzy about the spike in witchcrime. Nobody would miss the connection to the Starling Twins. And the Wednesday Coven would be as intrigued as everyone else.